Gathering Dark, Candice Fox [inspirational books for students .TXT] 📗

and huge colorful go-cups, knowing only what she told me—that she needed to run some errands, take care of her shattered life. It was clear she was going to score drugs, get a supply that would keep her stable through the next few days of searching for her child.

I parked on Sunset in the lot belonging to a Ralphs supermarket. I walked with my ice cream container to a little shop set in a strip mall between a nail salon and a UPS store. A bell rang above the glass door as I entered. The floors were sticky. A wall of dusty dog toys stood to the left of me and a row of leather chairs to the right. A gray pit bull leaped from the ground as I entered, eager to check me out, causing its owner to be yanked forward in her chair, out of what looked like a dream-filled sleep. I got the feeling the woman with the dog was just a prop for the charade that the veterinary office really stayed open twenty-four hours to deal with the needs of Hollywood’s pampered pets. She had no handbag, and the groove she’d made in the chair looked old. There was a striking resemblance between her and the woman behind the counter, who looked up lazily from her computer screen as I entered, rubbing her long, pointed nose on a raggedy tissue.

“I was just hoping for a quick check-up appointment.” I smiled, putting the ice cream container on the counter.

“Oh, yeah, right.” The woman yawned into her tissue. “We can do that. It’s a hundred bucks, flat fee, and then if we find anything that needs doing you’ll be charged on top of that. How old is your dog?” She leaned to look over the counter.

“It’s not a dog, it’s a gopher.” I peeled the lid off the container. The woman stood and glanced in at Hugh Jackman. He was standing on his hind legs, sniffing the air, little paws wringing pensively at his chest.

“Very funny.” The woman sat back down.

“I’m not joking.”

“We can’t do a check-up on a gopher.” She gave me a pitying look.

“Why not?”

“Because it’s…” She gestured hopelessly at the container, waited for me to catch on. I just stared at her. “Look, lady, if you brought a mosquito in here we wouldn’t run a check-up on that, either.”

“You guys provide care for hamsters?” I asked.

“Ah, yes, but—”

“So what’s the difference?”

She slumped in her chair, looking up at me. I waited. In time, the receptionist hauled herself out of her chair and walked through a door beside a rack of worming tablets, closing it behind her. The pit bull was whimpering, its tail thumping on the floor. I lifted Hugh Jackman out of the ice cream tub and ran him through my hands a bit. He crawled up to my shoulder and I let him sit there a while fiddling with a strand of my hair. When the door beside the rack of tablets opened again I put him back in the box.

The veterinarian was a man in his forties with high, bushy hair. He had just washed his face, water clinging to his dark stubble. He came and leaned on the counter beside me.

“This is real cute,” he said. “Who sent you? Stevie Leaf?”

“No one sent me.”

“What do you want?” he asked. There was a mustard stain on the collar of his white coat. “I got Kit Kat and Cristy, fifty a bag.”

“I don’t want any drugs. I didn’t come here as a joke. I want my gopher examined.”

He snorted. I folded my arms. In a few seconds, his wide grin drooped slowly. “Examined for what?”

“I don’t know. Parasites, fleas, intestinal worms?” I shrugged. “Whatever you’d examine any other pet that came in here for. I want a full checkup. I’ve got money. Cash.”

“You know, there’s a golf course behind my house,” the vet said. “They poison these things by the hundreds. Shovel them dead into bags. Using actual shovels, honey. You ever heard of gopher fishing? Hillbillies do it. It’s a national pastime. Why you’d want to keep one as a pet is one thing, but why you’d spend good money having one checked by a vet is another.”

“Why don’t you just let me spend my money how I want to,” I said.

“You’re crazy.” He stood, looked to the woman with the pit bull for confirmation. “She’s crazy. What do I care? I’ll examine the damn gopher. I got nothing better to do.”

“One more thing. On the door you say you do pet grooming.”

“That’s for dogs, honey. Dogs and cats, not lawn rats.”

“Okay.” I nodded as he took the container toward the door near the pill rack. “I’ll wait here.”

I sat by the woman with the pit bull, who had just about fallen asleep again in her chair. I patted the dog and watched the afternoon activity through the dirty windows to the street.

BLAIR

Sasha opened the door and stared through the gopher mansion at me, her face distorted through the warped and bubbled plastic. I shifted the house against my hip and smiled, but didn’t get one in return.

“What are you doing here?” she said. “You didn’t call.”

“I came to show you my gopher,” I said. “My very healthy, active, biologically sound lawn rat.”

Sasha turned and walked into the house. I followed awkwardly behind her. I was about to put the gopher mansion on the kitchen counter when she barked from the other side of the marble surface, “Don’t put that there!”

I walked toward the dining room table.

“Not there, either. No eating surfaces.”

“Well, I can’t stand here holding it the whole time, Sasha.”

She opened the door and led me out into the backyard, wincing as I placed the house on the glass outdoor table. With the huge enclosure removed from my vision, I could see her eyes and nose were red and puffy from tears. I have learned over the years that it’s better to let Sasha bring a problem to